Kyle Cooke's Cannes Kiss Carousel Keeps Spinning

Kyle Cooke’s romantic life reads like a highlight reel from a reality TV binge session—because, well, it is. The Summer House star showed up at Cannes Lions this June already equipped with fresh dating material, casually mentioning to Page Six reporter Evan Real during a Wednesday, June 24 appearance on his“Virtual Reali-tea”podcast that he’d locked lips with someone named Astrid, even teasing that she was waiting for him back at his hotel room. But here’s where it gets messy: Cooke also had to come clean about another viral kiss making the rounds online.

That one—with influencer Connor Wood, also known as Fibula—wasn’t actually romantic. It was a calculated move.“Listen, it’s pride month, I leaned into it,”Cooke explained, confirming he and Wood staged the whole thing. They’d had a long conversation the night before that culminated in what he’s now describing as a deliberate,“staged kiss.”Message sent; moment captured; narrative controlled.

This dating carousel spins against the backdrop of Cooke’s separation from his estranged wife, Amanda Batula, which they announced back in January with a carefully worded statement about“mutual and amicable”parting ways. But the real plot twist came two months later when Batula revealed she was casually dating their Summer House costar, West Wilson—a detail that reportedly blindsided Cooke. Since then, he’s been actively stepping back into the dating scene himself, getting spotted with fellow Bravo personalities including Meghan King (after a New York City party in April) and Southern Charm’s Salley Carson (at the Summer House premiere in February).

What’s fascinating isn’t the kiss count—it’s the transparency mixed with theatricality. Cooke’s willing to acknowledge his moves while simultaneously engineering them for public consumption. He’s not hiding; he’s curating. And whether you read that as refreshingly honest or strategically savvy probably says more about your own relationship with celebrity culture than it does about him.

The real question lingering underneath all this? How long before the story shifts from“who he’s kissing now”to“whether any of it sticks.”